Riveted Maille Aventail for Migration Era Helmet

 This is a Vendel helmet created by Richard Jones of Knotwolf Armory in Lawrence, KS.  The goal of this project is to create an aventail for this type of helmet using maille links that are roughly period appropriate using easily obtained materials and tools:

The aventail will weigh approximately 4 pounds and contain roughly 5,000 rings.  Manufacture time from wire to complete is estimated at 160 hours; the most labor intensive step, setting rivets is expected to consume about 30% of the time.

In order to facilitate completion of this first project some modern material, tool and process shortcuts will be taken as long as the general appearance of link authenticity is not greatly sacrificed.

Current Materials & Process: Wire is 16.5 gauge (1.7 mm) black annealed tie wire readily available from US hardware stores for $1/pound.  The wire is coiled around a 1/4" mandrel yielding a 6.35 mm ID and cut with roughly 2 mm overlap or -45°.  The cut ends are angled to produce a snake head overlap.  Only the overlap is flattened using an 800g hammer.

Prior to flattening the rings are annealed in either a torch flame or a small forge made from a can, refectory cement and heated with a torch.  Due to the imprecise nature of loosely coiled springs, some rings may need the overlap re-aligned using a small unmodifed pair of need-nose pliers.

Rings are annealed a second time prior to riveting.

A small 1mm hole is pre-drilled with a bench top jeweler's drill press.  The hole is then enlarged by pounding a small finishing nail through it.  The process needs to change to using either a set of modified punch pliers or a modified sheet metal punch.

A homemade pair of rivet setting tongs have a small divet hollowed out on both faces creating a rivet with a dome head on both sides.  The divets are not properly lined up which causes the rivet to bend and stretch the ring slightly.

Process and tool improvements:
1. tightly wind the coils using a jig
2. use a larger diameter mandrel
3. do not cut with overlap
4. create a pair of overlap pliers (
5. create a pair of overlap alignment pliers
5. create a pair of punch pliers
6. create a proper rivet plier
see "TheTools" file @ rivetedmaille